One of the most disturbing consumer protection problems in the automotive collision repair industry is caused by the improper repair of vehicles that have been declared "total loss" vehicles by insurance companies, typically as a result of being involved in accidents, natural disasters, or vandalism. An insurance company typically declares a vehicle a total loss when the cost to repair the vehicle exceeds 75% of the actual cash value of the vehicle. Often, when these total loss vehicles are repaired, they are not returned to pre-accident condition, because repairing such vehicles to industry standards (restoring them) is not cost-effective. Improperly repaired total loss vehicles give rise to consumer protection problems and pose significant safety hazards.
Specifically, improperly repaired vehicles may not perform safely under normal driving conditions and, in collisions, can literally fall apart. Current law does not uniformly require that a consumer be forewarned that a particular vehicle is a repaired total loss vehicle when it is purchased. Thus, buyers can unknowingly purchase improperly repaired vehicles that give rise to unexpected costly repairs when latent problems are later discovered. In addition, when the buyer discovers a problem with such a vehicle, the value of the vehicle to the buyer is diminished. If the buyer had known of the improper repairs or damage at the time of purchase, the buyer may not have purchased the vehicle at all. Also, improper repair of such vehicles gives rise to increased costs to insurance companies, because insurance claims are more frequent and costly for improperly rebuilt vehicles. The increase in frequency and cost of insurance claims typically results in increased premiums for consumers in general. Thus, costs of repairs and insurance, diminished value, and serious safety problems pose a significant consumer protection problem to the industry and to the public.
Also, government regulatory agencies have had difficulty regulating consumer protection laws for repaired total loss vehicles, because it is often difficult to detect camouflaged damage and substandard repairs after the fact and because there is no industry standard by which to assess the quality of repairs to a damaged vehicle. In addition, an affected consumer is often not aware that the vehicle has been damaged and repaired if no inspection is performed. Thus, it is not always evident when and how to apply preventive consumer protection regulations. Also, repairs to damaged vehicles are often camouflaged and are difficult for an untrained technician to detect. Currently, collision repair technicians visually inspect such vehicles, completely relying on their individual levels of training and expertise to make judgments regarding the quality of the repairs performed to such vehicles. The quality of each inspection is thus subjective and is not uniform from vehicle to vehicle.
Current automobile-related computer systems are directed to estimating the costs of repairs of known damage and to the diagnosis of known operability problems. For example, computer systems exist for estimating salvage value at the time a vehicle is being repaired for known collision damage. These systems are employed to provide salvage-related damage information to insurance companies. There are also computer-based estimating systems for estimating the cost of repairs. In addition, computer-based diagnosis systems exist for diagnosing faults in automobile engines and for diagnosing current operating problems, such as those caused by improper wheel alignment. All of these systems operate when there is known damage or known operability problems with a vehicle.